Daniel Sturgis (born 1966) is a British painter living and working in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, England.

Life and work

Daniel Sturgis was born in

, and studied art at the

London College of Printing The London College of Communication is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. It specialises in media-related subjects including advertising, animation, film, graphic design, photography and sound arts. It has approximately ...

Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts Camberwell College of Arts is a public tertiary art school in Camberwell, in London, England. It is one of the six constituent colleges of the University of the Arts London. It offers further and higher education programmes, including postgra ...

before going to

Goldsmiths College Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wor ...

, where he graduated with a Master of Arts in 1994. He was a Rome Scholar at the

British School at Rome The British School at Rome (BSR) is an interdisciplinary research centre supporting the arts, humanities and architecture. History The British School at Rome (BSR) was established in 1901 and granted a UK Royal Charter in 1912. Its mission is " ...

(1998-1999). He is represented by at Luca Tommasi gallery in Milan and was artist in residence at the

Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Josef may refer to *Josef (given name) *Josef (surname) Josef is the surname of the following people: * Jens Josef (born 1967), German composer of classical music, a flutist and academic teacher * Michelle Josef (born 1954), Canadian musician and tr ...

Bethany, Connecticut (2016) and

Chinati Foundation The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati is a contemporary art museum located in Marfa, Texas, and based upon the ideas of its founder, artist Donald Judd. Mission The specific intention of Chinati is to preserve and present to the public perm ...

, Marfa, Texas (2007). He had his first major solo show at Camden Arts Centre in 1997. Since then, he has shown extensively in Europe and the USA. Sturgis's paintings have been seen to be at the forefront of a contemporary critical evaluation in

abstract art Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th ...

as shown in publications such as ''Painting Today'', or his participation in symposia such as ''Contemporary Painting and History''

Tate Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...

2009.
Tony Godfrey writes:

He belongs rather to all those artists who try to swim between high art and the popular, between art history and the present: Carl Ostendarp,
Jonathan Lasker Jonathan Lasker (born 1948) is an American abstract painter whose work has played an integral role in the development of Postmodern Painting. He currently lives and works in New York City. Lasker has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts ...
,
David Reed David Reed may refer to: Entertainment * David Vern Reed (1924–1989), American comics writer * David E. Reed (1927–1990), ''Reader's Digest'' editor * David Reed (artist) (born 1946), American artist * David Jay Reed (born 1950), artist * Da ...
,
Mary Heilmann Mary Heilmann is an American painter based in New York City and Bridgehampton, NY. She has had solo shows and travelling exhibitions at galleries such as 303 Gallery (NY, NY) and Hauser & Wirth Hauser & Wirth is a Swiss contemporary and modern a ...
. Within Britain he feels closest to those eclectic figures who flatten things out: Peter Kinley,
Patrick Caulfield Patrick Joseph Caulfield, (29 January 1936 – 29 September 2005), was an English painter and printmaker known for his bold canvases, which often incorporated elements of photorealism within a pared-down scene. Examples of his work are ''Po ...
. But the position he is in today, between art and design, between visual overload and reflection seems a crucial one.

The critic Terry R Myers writes:

I'm convinced that Sturgis has the art historical backbone to support the leaps of formal, spatial and representational faith that his work performs. He has thought a lot about not only the manner in which the language of abstraction has moved... from the exclusive realm of high modernism to the more inclusive space of design. Fully contributing to the current discourse in which abstraction can itself be understood as a subcategory of representation, the goal of Sturgis's paintings is that they remain fundamentally open, even accommodating, when it comes to a viewer's interpretations.

Sturgis has curated a number of exhibitions looking at aspects of contemporary painting and its historic legacy. These include, ''Bauhaus Utopia in Crisis'' Camberwell Space and Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (2020/21), ''The Indiscipline of Painting''

Tate St Ives Tate St Ives is an art gallery in St Ives, Cornwall, England, exhibiting work by modern British artists with links to the St Ives area. The Tate also took over management of another museum in the town, the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture ...

and Warwick Art Centre (2011/12), ''

Daniel Buren Daniel Buren (born 25 March 1938, in Boulogne-Billancourt) is a French conceptual artist, painter, and sculptor. He has won numerous awards including the Golden Lion for best pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1986), the International Award for ...

Voile Toile/Toile Voile''

Wordsworth Trust The Wordsworth Trust is an independent charity in the United Kingdom. It celebrates the life of the poet William Wordsworth, and looks after Dove Cottage in the Lake District village of Grasmere where Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy Wordswort ...

Grasmere (2005) and '' Jeremy Moon - a retrospective'' (2001) a UK touring exhibition.

Charlie Gere Charlie Gere is a British academic who is professor of media theory and history at The Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, The University of Lancaster and previously, director of research at the Institute for Cultural Research at The U ...

writing on Sturgis's curatorial practice, with reference to ''

Voile Toile/Toile Voile ''notes that:

What Sturgis actually did organising this event was to revive a debate about the nature of painting that had been more or less dormant in Britain since the late 1970s, and did so in a particularly striking manner.

He is a founding associate editor of the Journal for Contemporary Painting, a specialist selector and chapter author for Phaidon's painting anthology ''Vitamin P3'' and he has written for Tate Papers,

Burlington Magazine ''The Burlington Magazine'' is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation sin ...

and

Texte zur Kunst ''Texte zur Kunst'' is a German contemporary art magazine. History ''Texte zur Kunst'' was founded in 1990 in Cologne by art historian Stefan Germer and art critic Isabelle Graw. It has been published in Berlin since 2000. Since the death of ...

. Sturgis is professor of painting at the

University of the Arts London University of the Arts London is a collegiate university in London, England, specialising in arts, design, fashion and the performing arts. It is a federation of six arts colleges: Camberwell College of Arts, Central Saint Martins, Chelsea Coll ...

References

External links

*
Daniel Sturgis website

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London ''In Conversation: Means Without Ends'' Richard Dyer with Ian Davenport, Mark Francis, DJ Simpson & Daniel Sturgis, 15 February 2012
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sturgis, Daniel 1966 births Living people 20th-century English painters English male painters 21st-century English painters Alumni of Goldsmiths, University of London English contemporary artists British abstract artists Academics of Goldsmiths, University of London Academics of Camberwell College of Arts Academics of the University of the Arts London Artists from London 20th-century English male artists 21st-century English male artists